Usability Requirements and Deduced General Design Concepts for Mobile Solutions in Production Contexts at ZF

Abstract: The thesis project collected usability requirements and formulated design principles for mobile solutions in an industrial production context. A second aim of the present thesis was to evaluate the applicability of the contextual design (CD) methodology in such a context. Methods from the CD process were employed and a design workshop was held to gather data for the usability requirements and the design principles. The case study methodology was used to evaluate the CD process. Important aspects of the work practice found could be clustered according to the categories: information technology (IT) hardware and system, communication, documentation, and work organization. The five design concepts: easy learning and expert performance, user control and guidance, peripheral attention and unobtrusiveness, robustness and resilience, and holistic solution and background information were formulated and enriched by examples to ensure a high usability of future mobile solutions. The CD methodology proved to be useful for investigating a production context. Further research is needed first to develop a mobile solution following the outlined design principles and second to evaluate the principles by usability""testing of the mobile solution.